Group-Chat Culture Is Out of Control

For better or worse, we might be in the Age of the Group Chat. In a recent survey, most people said they felt stressed out by group messages, which can feel like a part-time job.

Connection is wonderful. Grexts, short for group texts, have the feature of imitating the casual back-and-forth of a dialogue, and the result can be more dynamic and fun than a two-person thread. Having a chat going also means you have a space to share your updates throughout the day, a reminder that you’re part of something.

Some researchers call this “ambient(周围的) virtual presence”: Even when you’re alone, you’re not alone. One researcher compares this phenomenon to echolocation(回声定位), the process that some animals, such as bats and dolphins, use to locate objects: They produce a continuous sound and use the resulting echo to sense their surroundings. Humans might use technologies such as group chats in a similar way—as a call-and-response, taking in information about their social networks and locating themselves within those webs.

But taking in too many signals can be overwhelming. Professor Bayer argued that group chats can create a “waterfall type of effect”, where messages keep flooding in and adding up. Eventually, you’re underwater. Another researcher suggested that different chat members all bring their own personalities, communication styles, and expectations for group norms. Without a standard etiquette (礼仪), people have varied opinions about what degree of responsiveness is required—which can cause real tension.

Grext anxiety is hard to resolve because it isn’t just about the group-chat or even mobile technology in general; it’s about the tension between being our own person and being responsible to others. Ultimately, most of us do want connection, even if it involves some duties.

2 . Bed rotting — the practice of spending long periods of time just staying under the covers with snacks, screens and other creature comforts — is gaining popularity on social media. Some Generation Z trend followers are now viewing it as a form of self-care, but doctors warn too much could be “sign of depression”. Are these extended breaks really wise for one’s mental health — or could they be a cause for concern?

Dr. Ryan Sultan, a professor at Columbia University in New York, who treats many young people, called the bed rotting trend attractive. “In our culture today, with too much to do, too many expectations and too much productivity, many young individuals (个人) are feeling burned out and often aren’t getting enough sleep. It’s easy to see why taking time off to lie around is attractive,” Sultan said. “In many ways, this is beneficial. It’s a chance to get away from real-life problems and clear your head before returning to life in a better state of mind, ” he added.

For the downside, however, he said a long-term need or desire for bed rotting could do harm to one’s physical health. Spending too many daytime hours in bed — awake or not — could destroy sleep schedules. Our brains are fine-tuned for sleep in darkness and alertness in light. Lying in bed half-asleep during the day will worsen sleep schedules — once that happens, it is a challenge to fix. It could also lead to blood pressure problems and obesity (肥胖).

Long-term need or desire for bed rotting could also be a warning sign of depression, according to a mental health expert. Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, agreed that while some downtime can be useful in terms of de-stressing and rejuvenation (更新), too much bed rotting is a bad health practice. In addition to increasing the risk of depression, it contributes to decreased motivation (动力) as well.

Instead of bed rotting, Siegel recommends regular exercise as a better form of de-stressing. While the occasional lazy day can be beneficial, too much could have the opposite effect. If it happens every day, that’s a fairly sensitive test for depression. Those who lack the motivation to get out of bed could also try calling or texting a family member for support, socializing with close friends, finding a small task to complete, or reaching out to a medical professional for help.

Earlier this year, mystery travel became trendy among China’s young people and they     1     (buy) travel blind boxes to see new places. Just as the name implies, mystery travel is not only exciting and simple to plan, but also allows travelers to explore destinations     2     they may never have considered otherwise. After you’ve provided the travel agency with some necessary information like the travel dates, budgets, food choices and     3     (activity) appealing to you etc, all you need to do is to sit back, relax, and wait for your plane tickets.     4     adds to its mystery is that the destination isn’t revealed until the day of departure.

6 . Our green spaces are shrinking, despite all the benefits they give us. If we want to save them, we need to value the ecosystem and health and wellbeing services they offer.

Sheffield city council’s balance sheet shows its parks as a £16m liability (负担). Traditional accountancy methods focus on a park’s saleable value, or its operational costs associated with maintenance. So England’s 27,000 parks are considered as financial liabilities rather than the amazing asset to our health and wellbeing that any of their 37 million regular users could vouch for. They also deliver a range of ecosystem services such as improved air and water quality, flood risk reduction by absorbing water run-off, and cooling the urban environment as well as providing much-needed habitat for wildlife. By using a “natural capital” accounting approach that puts a value on all these social, environmental and economic contributions, Sheffield discovered that for every £1 spent on its parks, they generate £34 of benefits.

Yet this true value is not widely measured or recognised. As Ian Walmsley, Stockport council’s green space manager told the Communities and Local Government select committee parks inquiry, “an argument has never been successfully made that if you spend a certain amount of money on a park, there will be a saving in the health budget and therefore you should take money out of the health budget and put it into parks”. As a result, the MPs inquiry report published last week warned that parks are at a tipping point of decline, threatened by a 92% reduction in their budgets since 2010-11 because of local authority cuts. Less money means fewer park rangers, less maintenance, more litter, dog poo and antisocial behaviour, including gang and drug-related activities, and gradually much-loved local parks turn into dangerous and unappealing areas. Tragically it’s the small, green spaces in poorer, built-up areas that suffer disproportionate cuts to park keepers and maintenance. We have been here before. Uncared-for, litter-strewn parks were characteristic of Thatcher’s Britain before an injection of public spending by a Labour government and £850m of lottery cash brought them back to life.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Andrew Hinchley, green space development officer at the London Borough of Camden, told MPs if we had new ways of valuing the services parks provide for improving water quality, for example, then you could ask water companies to pay towards their upkeep.

The committee wants councils to publish strategic plans to recognise the real value of parks and to set out how they will be managed (possibly by a charitable trust, as Newcastle is looking into) to maximise their contribution to wider local authority goals such as promoting healthier lifestyles. It suggests the government’s obesity strategy could fund parks. It also suggests that it could be a legal requirement for councils to produce such strategies.

7 . A new survey reviews that more than 60% of websites and apps intended for Canadian children may be collecting personal information and passing it on to a third party. The survey was completed by the Global Privacy Enforcement Network, which reviewed 1,494 websites and apps.

Focusing on trends among Canadian users, the sweep team reviewed 118 websites and apps targeted directly at children, as well as 54 that are known to be popular with and used by kids. The team’s findings showed that more than 50% of Canadian sites collect personal information from children, including names, addresses, phone numbers and photos, audio or video. In addition, 62% of sites admitted they may show that personal information to third parties. Another 62% allowed the user to be redirected to a different site, and only 28% of the sites and apps involved any form of parental control or protection.

A member of the team Tobi Cohen, outlined a few of the sites that did and did not live up to the standards of children’s privacy online. She praised both Family.ca and Lego.com for their message boards that did not allow users to post personal information, and noted that santasvillage. ca asked users to provide their full name and email address. Gamezhero.com was also singled out for allowing users to display personal information, including names, age, sex and locations. Pbskids.org, on the other hand, was praised for only offering generic, pre-set avatars (头像) and barring users form uploading personal photos.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada refused to release a full list of the websites and apps reviewed. When asked what would be done with results, commissioner Daniel Therrien said that companies reviewed in the sweep would be kept informed of the findings. “It’s our usual practice after conducting a sweep to write a number of companies to point out the things that we’ve seen, to sometimes ask that things be changed, and on the whole the companies react positively to these requests.” Therrien added.

In an attempt to help kids better understand why their privacy matters, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has created a lesson plan for kids in Grade 7 and 8 that explains the Global Privacy Enforcements Network and has kids conduct privacy reviews of their own.

“We know that companies are not the only ones responsible for the protection of kids’ privacy.” Therrien said. “Parents and teachers obviously have a role. We have a role, particularly in the area of increasing awareness of privacy issues among the public.”

Matthew Johnson, director of education at Media Smarts, said that the sweep’s results were sadly unsurprising. Media Smarts, an Ottawa-based non-profit digital literacy outfit intended to improve media literacy and empowering the youth to better engage with media, offers age-appropriate tips to parents concerned with keeping their kids safe online.

Johnson explained that in addition to educating themselves on the issue, the best thing parents could do to protect children’s privacy online is to educate kids on the importance of the function of their personal data. He mentioned an initiative by Media Smarts called Privacy Pirates, an online game that aims to teach kids at the age of seven to nine that all forms of personal information should be protected and added that their personal information has value and they should think twice before giving it out.